


Summertime and Butterflies (All Belong to Your Creation)

by orphan_account



Category: Little Red Riding Hood (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:40:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28101057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: There is a common misconception that life is not a fairy tale.This is something told to children by tired mothers who can’t remember the last time they did something by themselves, or exhausted fathers who worked overtime at a job they hate. Losing sight of the magical parts of life is laughably easy, especially if you’re told at every turn that magic doesn’t exist.But magic does exist. It hides in plain sight, right there for anyone to see, if they look in exactly the right way.
Kudos: 1
Collections: Books of Yule





	Summertime and Butterflies (All Belong to Your Creation)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



There is a common misconception that life is not a fairy tale.

This is something told to children by tired mothers who can’t remember the last time they did something by themselves, or exhausted fathers who worked overtime at a job they hate. Losing sight of the magical parts of life is laughably easy, especially if you’re told at every turn that magic doesn’t exist.

But magic _does_ exist. It hides in plain sight, right there for anyone to see, if they look in exactly the right way.

Valerie Price knew better than anyone that magic existed. Magic was all around her: in her fingertips, in the glow of her hair, and in the dilapidated storage closet on the eleventh floor of a big-shot law-firm that specialised in divorce. Why they couldn’t meet in literally any other location on the planet, Valerie didn’t know, but she found herself wondering about it for the billionth time as she watched her boots drag up yet another staircase.

Valerie didn’t hate her job. She thought it was ridiculous and often got annoyed enough to turn a condescending asshole into a frog for an hour or two, but she didn’t hate it. The part that annoyed her was the fact that she had the power to turn a douchebag into a slimy amphibian, but she wasn’t allowed to take an elevator to her meeting.

“Why am I not allowed to use the elevator?” Valerie demanded of the stacks of buckets in the corner of the storage closet. “Do you know how many stairs are involved to get all the way to this floor? Enough to kill me, that’s for sure.”

“It’s one in the morning, V.” The buckets shifted and Valerie could just make out the familiar sharpness of her boss’s gaze. “It would be very suspicious if the elevator went up and down from the eleventh floor, specifically, every time we have a meeting. Not to mention that their cameras wouldn’t pick you up, so it would be an _empty_ elevator going up and down to the eleventh floor on a regular basis. We’re not trying to get caught, we’re trying to do our jobs.”

Valerie flipped over a trashcan so she could sit down on it, leaning precariously backward against the wall. “It would be just as easy, if not easier, to meet in a sketchy alley behind a dive bar like all the other mystical beings with dubious intent.” She placed a cigarette between her lips, then spoke around it. “Even a creepy clearing in the forest would be better, though that still involves too much hiking. I personally like the bar idea. Let’s start meeting up over beer and fries, that sounds a hell of a lot less uncomfortable than any of the other options.”

The flick of her lighter was loud in the small room. Candala didn’t say anything, even though Valerie knew she wasn’t fond of the habit.

“If you’re done complaining,” Candala drawled, “I do have a job for you.”

“Complaining brings me great joy,” Valerie replied. A tap to her cigarette, and she watched the ash float down to the floor. “I will never give it up.”

“Sure.”

Valerie let out a deep breath, only now feeling her heart slow down after climbing all those stairs. She really could be fitter, but she also didn’t care enough to do anything about it. She’d much rather work on convincing Candala to move their meeting spot.

“Who is it this time? If there’s another foot fetish involved, I don’t want it.”

It was lucky, really, that Candala didn’t have the ability to roast Valerie alive with her eyes.

“Her name is Ria.” Candala plucked the cigarette from between Valerie’s fingers, vanishing it easily with a twist of her hand. “She lives with her mother at the edge of a forest. She’s about to take a very important walk and you need to be with her.”

Valerie narrowed her eyes. “I was kidding about the forest. Dirt and bugs disagree with me on the deepest level of my soul.”

Candala smiled and it was fake all the way through. “I am in the business of spreading happiness. This way you have new material to complain about, and as previously stated, it should bring you great joy.”

Valerie stood. “As always, I completely regret every single step I climbed to get to this meeting and I did not have a good time at all.”

She could still hear Candala laughing after the door to the storage closet had slammed shut behind her.

There is a reason why fairy tales always took place in forests. Nature would always be closer to magic than anything humans created, no matter how advanced their technology became.

What made something magic wasn’t what it could do or the benefits that could be gained from it. Magic was a feeling. It was something unexplainable that nagged and nagged right at the bottom of your ribs until eventually you give in to the pull. Magic was in the tree branches intertwining and the thin strips of golden light that lingered in a way that was just temporary enough to feel fleeting, but consistent enough to be comforting. Magic was in the unknown of the thick moss that coated the forest floor and felt like a cool caress against bare feet, and it was in the slow trickle of streams that carried life with them wherever they went.

Valerie grimaced in disgust. She was even wearing her least favourite pair of shoes, and she still felt sorry for them. The ground was gooey. Nothing, except for brownies and mince pies, should ever be gooey.

She was bent over, looking for a stick or a sharp rock, or anything that could be used to remove the chunks of mud from the bottom of her shoes, when she heard footsteps crunching along over the piles of broken branches that was really a health hazard, if you thought about it. They made it so easy to trip, and if you fell down here, there was a good chance you’d get eaten by bugs or be subtly integrated into the root system of a gigantic tree older than the entire universe who could only realistically have grown this large by sucking the life force from unsuspecting humans.

She stood with a sigh. Her shoes would have to wait. She had a job to do.

The girl, Ria, let out a little scream when Valerie burst through the trees in a rather more dramatic fashion than she had originally intended. Her entrance was largely caused by what she suspected to be a spiderweb brushing along the back of her shoulders, which had made her throw herself carelessly in the direction of the path.

“Are you Ria?” Valerie asked. “I mean, I know you are, but I’m supposed to get verbal confirmation as a sign of consent and yada yada, it doesn’t really matter.”

Ria blinked at her with wide eyes. Her face had gone weirdly white, and Valerie really hoped she wasn’t about to pass out. She knew from experience how much effort that took to deal with. Candala would make her fill out at least seven extra forms, and she would get in heaps of trouble if she left Ria to come to by herself right there on the forest floor. She would have to conjure up a house or a neatly furnished cave and provide her with sugary water and a snack, and it was all too far above Valerie’s paygrade.

“Please don’t faint,” Valerie asked, as kindly as she was able. She tried to scrape off some of the dirt on her shoes against the pavement they were standing on. “Fuck, don’t you just hate nature?”

“You shouldn’t stray from the path,” Ria said shakily. “It’s dangerous.”

Valerie scoffed. “The only thing it is, dear Ria, is annoyingly dirty.”

“How do you know my name?”

Valerie reached out to take the basket from Ria’s arms and started walking. The sooner they finished their adventure, the sooner Valerie could go home and incinerate her shoes.

“So it is your name?”

“Yes.” Valerie could hear Ria struggle to keep up with her, but she refused to slow down.

“Good. Where are we going?”

“To my grandmother’s house.”

Valerie stopped abruptly, ignoring the heavy thud of Ria running into her from behind. She peered into the basket. “Right. To drop off food. What could possibly go wrong with that?”

“Not much,” Ria said. “As long as I don’t stray from the path.”

Valerie looked at her thoughtfully. “Why do you keep talking about the path? I know the rest of this dump is filled with creepy crawlies, but it is at least interesting. Aren’t you curious to see what’s out there?”

“I could get lost,” Ria said, “Or eaten by wolves.”

“Wolves?” Valerie repeated. “That sounds fake, but I’ll take your word for it.” She glanced around the forest. It had started raining, just a misty layer of drops that occasionally brushed against Valerie’s skin and made her shiver. “How far do we still need to go?”

She really hoped she had arrived just in time that they were just about to round the corner to Grandma’s house. Hiking really wasn’t her thing, and rain even less.

“It’s still a while away,” Ria said, making Valerie groan and start walking.

“I’m going to tell Candala I’m quitting,” Valerie declared. “If she can’t set me up with nice, indoor gigs with no feet and no date rape drugs and no swimming in the ocean with all the murderous, peeing fish, I don’t want to do this job anymore.”

“What is your job?” Ria asked. “And how did you know my name? What’s your name?”

“I’m Valerie,” she said, “Your acting fairy godmother.”

“Uhm,” Ria said, still taking big steps to keep up with Valerie. “There’s no such thing.”

“Sure there are,” Valerie said. “If there weren’t, how do you explain me being here, carrying your basket for you?”

“Maybe I should take that back.” Ria tried to grab for the basket, but Valerie swatted her away lightly. “I can walk on my own, you really don’t have to walk with me.”

Valerie stopped. Ria crashed into her, again. Valerie faced her head on. “Are you ashamed of me?”

“What?”

Valerie shook her head angrily. “It’s just that everywhere I go, people are always telling me that they don’t want me around. Is it because I’m not the fairy godmother you wanted? I know Sherri is better at it than I am, but she’s an actual mother, and she can’t be assigned to everyone. That would defeat the purpose of having a co-worker, and I can’t exactly apply to transfer to Seasonal Beings because if you thought the fairy godmothering paperwork was a lot to handle, then oh boy, should you get a look at Santa’s records. He has to keep track of _everyone_? I barely remembered your name, never mind every sin ever committed by all the children on the entire planet.”

Ria was staring at Valerie with a deer-in-the-headlights expression.

“So?”

“So, what?” Ria asked.

“Are you ashamed of me?”

“I don’t know you,” Ria said slowly. “So I don’t know if I have enough ground to stand on to feel ashamed. Mostly I’m terrified. Who are you?”

Valerie let out a deep suffering sigh, her chin dropping to her chest. When she looked up, Ria was frowning at her.

“This is no good,” Valerie declared. “I can’t impact your life if you don’t trust me. Let’s spice things up.”

She turned on her heels and slipped through the trees, her feet stomping on moss and branches and other paraphernalia.

“Wait!” Ria called after her. “I’m not allowed to stray off the path. Please, can I just have my basket back?”

“Come get it,” Valerie threw over her shoulder. “We’re doing some corporate team building.”

She stopped as soon as she spotted a fallen tree branch. It was nice and thick with a perfectly flat section that would accommodate her butt perfectly. She hesitated for barely a second, then took the tablecloth from Ria’s basket and threw it over the branch. She was already carrying enough dirt around on her shoes, there was no need for her pants to join in on the party.

It took Ria a few minutes to join her, and when she did, she looked terrified and quite a bit pissed off.

“This is ridiculous,” she nearly yelled. Valerie paid attention with half an ear, preoccupied with fishing her half empty packet of cigarettes from her back pocket.

Ria continued. “You show up out of nowhere and steal my grandmother’s food without a care in the world, and then you claim to be a _fairy godmother_ , of all things, even though you look like you turned to punk music as an escape from your rough childhood and now that you’re grown up, you blame the government instead of your parents for your unhappiness, even though unhappiness doesn’t come from outside forces, it comes from your attitude towards life and the one you’re living. I don’t need a fairy godmother. I’m perfectly content to be walking the same path that I take every day. Maybe you need someone to hold your hand, instead.”

“Hmm.” Valerie took her time with lighting her cigarette, then blew the smoke away from Ria. “Sit down.”

“No.” Ria stubbornly folded her arms across her chest. “Give me back the tablecloth, or I swear I’m going to take the basket and leave you right here.”

“You can totally do that,” Valerie said, “or you can sit down and we can have a chat about life and why it doesn’t suck.”

“It’s not safe here.”

“Sure it is,” Valerie said. “I can make the blood inside of any animal boil with the snap of my fingers.”

Ria frowned. “For real?”

Valerie laughed. “No. The best I can do is turn them into something slightly less terrifying. How do you feel about frogs? They’re my specialty, and chances are, if we get chased by a bear, I will probably revert to something I know well, with the adrenaline, and everything. I wouldn’t want to take any unnecessary risks that could leave us worse off than we had been.”

“What are you talking about?”

Valerie rushed to put out a tiny smoulder on the tablecloth from where she hadn’t been paying attention to her cigarette. “I just addressed your fears of being eaten by a wild animal. Now, will you please sit down?”

“Fine.” It was clear that Ria would rather do anything else. “Can you please explain to me what’s going on?”

“Well, I am here to cater to your every whim.” Valerie paused. “More or less.”

Ria sat down.

Valerie took her time to finish her cigarette and put it out against the branch they were sitting on. She focused, twisted her hand, and instead of a cigarette bud, she held a blue flower. She offered it to Ria, who took it carefully, eyes wide.

“There are pivotal points in the lives of every existing person. This is a point where all their previous choices, no matter how small, as well as the choices of those around them, all come together to form one special moment that has the potential to change the course of their life entirely.

“What is important is that pivotal points look different on everyone. Some are barely noticeable, but have such a long, lasting impact that it doesn’t matter if it passed by almost unnoticed. Others are much more significant and become something for that person to hold on to as they seek the change they need. These are the points I am concerned with.

“Big pivotal points often come with more choices. Change isn’t always good, and just because an event can spark change, doesn’t always guarantee that it will be for the better.”

“You’re there to make sure people make the right choices?” Ria asked. She still looked sceptical.

Valerie shrugged. “I can’t make anyone do anything. What I can do is give them the opportunity to see all the choices available to them, so they don’t feel boxed in. No one can make rational decisions when they’re boxed in.”

“And you have a boss?”

“Yes, of course.” Valerie sighed. “Do you really think that I would drag myself through places like these for the fun of it?”

“And you get paid?”

“No.” Valerie looked up at the sky. “I’m a fairy. That means that I’m invisible to anyone completely human, unless I have been assigned as their godmother.”

“What does that have to do with not getting paid?”

“It means that, if I want any kind of purpose in life, other than hiding out alone at home and occasionally visiting my fairy friends, I need a job. There are much worse jobs than this one, and I do mostly like Candala, when she doesn’t make me climb eleven flights of stairs on a regular basis.”

“Are you even allowed to be telling me this?” Ria asked.

Valerie grinned. “Who’s going to believe you?”

Ria laughed. “Fair enough.” She tugged thoughtfully at a loose string on her shirt. “Does this mean that I’m about to face a pivotal moment?”

“Most likely.” Valerie glanced at the basket. “Can we eat some of that?”

“That’s my grandma’s food.”

Valerie raised an eyebrow. “So? We need to have a forest picnic. I am literally providing you with free emotional labour, the least you can do is feed me.”

“No.” Ria scratched thoughtfully at her head. “Do you know what’s going to happen?”

“I know about as much as you,” Valerie said. “Less, actually, since I have little to no context for your life other than this walk that we’re on.”

“Doesn’t that make your job harder?”

“Not really,” Valerie said slowly. “I know where and when I need to be. The rest is up to my intuition, training and experience.” She made eye contact with Ria. “Do you trust me?”

“I don’t know,” Ria said, and Valerie could appreciate her honesty. “I think I might believe you. Is that good enough for now?”

Valerie sighed as if the weight of the entire world had been dropped onto her shoulders. “I suppose.”


End file.
